Foreign meddlers

By M.R. | CAIRO

MOST civil wars fester largely unattended by the rest of the world. Others, such as those in Spain (1936-9), Lebanon (1975-1990) or Bosnia (1992-5) have lured in multiple foreign meddlers. Two and a half years after its eruption, Syria’s fiendishly complex internal conflict has attracted an especially tangled host of outside schemers, punters and players. Here is a list of the main outside actors, along with a description of why they care and what they aim to gain.

Russia: Allied with President Bashar Assad’s family since Soviet times and worried by its own restive Muslim minority, Russia loathes Syria’s motley Islamist rebels. While insisting on the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs as an excuse to block UN censure of Syria’s regime, Russia has remained its principal source of weaponry. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, seeks to recapture faded glories, to fill the perceived vacuum left by American retreat from the Middle East (and send a subtle message that Moscow, unlike Washington, stays loyal to its dictator friends), to make money from arms sales and to obstruct the potential emergence of an Islamist-hued Sunni alliance along its southern borders.

America: America has always disliked Syria’s authoritarian, Iranian-allied regime. But American enthusiasm for the inclusive, pro-democracy uprising that erupted in 2011 faded as it morphed into a long, nasty and increasingly sectarian-tinged civil war. This has created quandaries, not least among them the fact that America appears to be aligned in this fight with such unsavory groups as al-Qaeda, and with Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority against religious minorities that fear the same sad fate suffered by minority groups in American-occupied Iraq. The chaos in Syria increasingly endangers its neighbours, all of which happen to be allies of the United States. The appalling toll of carnage, highlighted by recent chemical attacks against civilians, also generates pressure to intervene more forcefully. Yet in pure strategic terms Syria has not seemed important enough to merit big efforts to topple Mr Assad or to ensure his replacement by a government friendlier to America. So America has dithered, until now.

Iran: The close embrace between Syria’s ostensibly secular, Arab nationalist regime and Iran’s prickly Persian theocracy is one of the Middle East’s longer-standing ironies. Mr Assad’s Syria is the sole state allied with Iran, providing a crucial link between the Islamic Republic’s only other offshore strategic assets, the Shia militias in Iraq and Lebanon that are funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. What cements the tie is the fact that Alawites, a minority whose rather loosely held faith happens to be an esoteric offshoot of Shiism, form the core of Syria’s controlling elite. Iran has backed Mr Assad to the hilt with arms, fuel, military advisers and billions of dollars in cash, along with the supply of thousands of Shia fighters from Iraq and Lebanon. But the whiff of chemical weapons stirs especially nasty memories for Iran, which suffered horribly from poison gas during the 1980-87 Iran-Iraq war. Iran’s new, liberal-leaning administration wants to break out of diplomatic isolation and trade sanctions. What is the cost-to-benefit ratio of its commitment to Mr Assad?

Saudi Arabia: The Saudis see themselves as protectors of Sunni Muslim orthodoxy, locked in a long-term struggle to contain Iran, a rival power they view as both politically and religiously subversive. They have sparred before with Iran in proxy fights in places such as Lebanon, Iraq and Bahrain, so the war in Syria would seem a natural extension. Yet while the Saudis have funded and armed Sunni opposition groups, it has not been easy and the flow has been intermittent. Reasons include the perennial disarray of Syria’s opposition, American, Turkish and Jordanian fears that Saudi weaponry could fall into the wrong hands, and Saudi rivalry with other rebel funders such as Qatar and private Gulf donors, who are feared to be backing the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Saudis detest, or radical jihadist groups. Seeking to push America into fuller commitment, the Saudis find themselves in unwonted alignment with Israel.

The neighbours: Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey all have interests in Syria. They have reasons to fear both the Assad regime and the rebel opposition, as well as to fear the aftermath of Syria’s civil war. Their internal debates have raged between intervening and staying neutral. As a result they have neither been able to work together, nor to act decisively alone, yet each has been increasingly sucked into the conflict. Most of all they want it to end.